Comment by simianparrot
5 days ago
Yes Europe is in a really bad spot propaganda-wise. See Germany’s latest crusade against online «hate speech» — ie. unapproved political views.
5 days ago
Yes Europe is in a really bad spot propaganda-wise. See Germany’s latest crusade against online «hate speech» — ie. unapproved political views.
I wish more people volunteered to moderate online communities. Especially political ones.
It’s taking way too long for normal people to realize they have a stake and imperative to be part of these communities. Speech is shaped here, and many God awful decisions have to be made at scale.
There is no cost to holding the position you stated, and no one wants to get their hand dirty, or see how the sausage is made. You have to regular decide if this comment is actually hate speech, actual debate, or someone “asking questions”. Who knows what the actual false positive/negative rates are.
The sheer amount of filters, regexes and slur lists needed to stay abreast of toxicity and hate speech are absurdism at its best.
Nothing happens without an informed citizenry. The foundations of speech online are collapsing and weak. There need to be more citizen view points from the ground, deciding how they want this domain to operate.
That does not compute.
It computes quite well.
> It was a 2021 case involving Andy Grote, a local politician, that captured the country's attention. Grote complained about a tweet that called him a "pimmel," a German word for the male anatomy. His complaint triggered a police raid and accusations of excessive censorship by the government.
A police raid for calling a politician a dick. Let it sink.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-pros...
That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power of a politician in charge of leading local law enforcement. It was declared illegal later. And you take that as a proof for what about the whole of Germany?
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A little bit like a country's leader calling for the death penalty for a decorated pilot and astronaut who reminded service members of their duty to reject unlawful orders.
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In Italy there's a politician named Gasparri who has made a career (30+ years) of barring himself behind Parlamentary immunity and insulting on citizens/journalists. When they respond he sues them for libel or similar asking moral damages.
It does. That's why GrapheneOS left France; Signal is considering doing so to if ChatControl passes. Von Der Leyen and Breton clearly mentioned the possibility of banning X. And there are many other "signals".
But yeah we get it, there's bad censorhip (Iran, China, Russia), and there is the good censorhip, sorry, i meant "protection of children", when it's the EU. :o)
> there's bad censorhip (Iran, China, Russia), and there is the good censorhip
I understand that you're being facetious here, but this is literally true.
Words kill people sometimes, and in the same way that my right to swing my arm stops where your nose begins your right to say whatever you want stops where my safety begins.
Or to rephrase it, nobody can have free speech at all if others are allowed to threaten your health and safety for it, which automatically implies that violent and hateful speech must be curtailed. It is a variation on the paradox of tolerance.
Yes, there is room to debate exactly where the line is, but the fact that there is a line is fairly well settled except amongst the rabid.
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Don't you know, democracy means censorship, freedom of information means fascism, and most importantly we have always been at war with America.
Ingsoc in anything but name